Since 2004 he has been a member of the board of directors of Sovkomflot (a state-owned petroleum transport company) and a deputy chairman of the board of directors of Rosneft (a state-owned oil company).

Since August 31, 2004, Naryshkin has also been Chairman of the Board of Directors of Channel One of the Russian television.

Since September 13, 2004, he has been a Minister, Chief of Staff of the Government of Russia.

On February 15, 2007, President Vladimir Putin announced that Naryshkin had been appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Russia for external economic activity, focusing on collaboration with the Commonwealth of Independent States (Russia's EU).

In May 2008, Naryshkin was appointed chief of the Presidential Administration of Russia. In May 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev appointed him chairman of the Historical Truth Commission.

On top of all that, he's the Chairman of the State Duma, technically the fourth-most powerful person in Russia.

Legitimizing annexation of the former East Germany has Putin's approval, a step toward the restoration of the Great Liberal Russian Empire, i.e. the former USSR, which is Putin's Divine Commission.

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Russia’s bizarre proposal to condemn West Germany’s 1989 ‘annexation’ of East Germany

Russian lawmakers will consider a new statement that would condemn an event that happened 25 years ago – the reunification of Germany.

According to Russian news agency Tass, State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin has asked the Duma's Committee on Foreign Affairs to look into condemning the "annexation" of East Germany by West Germany in 1989.

Given the time that's passed and the relative success of German reunification, the idea has struck many as absurd: Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union in 1989, called it "nonsense" Wednesday. Similar outlandish statements have been made by Russian lawmakers recently – last year, one proposed a ban on high heels, for example.

However, this proposal can't be as easily dismissed: Naryshkin is an ally of President Vladimir Putin, and it seems unlikely he would have made such a bold statement without the Russian leader's approval.

And while the events it concerns may be long in the past, the motivation is likely the present. The plan was originally put forward by Nikolay Ivanov, a Communist Party lawmaker, who has argued that the reunification of Germany was insufficiently democratic. "Unlike Crimea, a referendum was not conducted in the German Democratic Republic," Ivanov was quoted as saying, referring to the region of Ukraine that broke away to join Russia last year after a disputed referendum.

Russia and Germany have an important, if complicated, relationship. Chancellor Angela Merkel is perhaps the closest Western leader to Putin – she grew up in East Germany, and – like Putin, who served with the KGB in Dresden – can speak both German and Russian. However, Merkel has been a prominent voice supporting sanctions on Russia after actions in Ukraine, and the relationship has been strained. Merkel famously told President Obama that the Russian leader was living "in another world."

Ivanov pointed to comments made by the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Anne Brasseur of Luxembourg, who had accused Russia of annexing Crimea, and said his proposal was a "form of a retaliatory step." Merkel herself had also recently condemned Russia for its actions in Crimea. “The annexation of Crimea is a violation of something that has made up our peaceful coexistence, namely the protection of borders and territorial integrity,” Merkel said last week in Davos, Switzerland.

Even if the proposal is just bluster, a direct comparison between the two events does seem a little hard to make. The reunification of Germany occurred after Hungary removed its border fence, allowing thousands of East Germans to escape to the West, and eventually helped to topple the Berlin Wall. After large protests, the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) later held free and fair elections in 1990, which led to the formation of a pro-reunification government that signed an agreement to dissolve East Germany and join the West.

Meanwhile, the annexation of Crimea followed violence in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, and the mysterious arrival of the "little green men" widely assumed to be Russian troops. A rushed referendum was held with these troops in Crimea, which produced overwhelmingly pro-Russian results.

This story is nearly a year old yet indicates a Germany not under Merkel might not stand side-by-side with the US and UK facing off Putin's Russia.

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The Sympathy Problem: Is Germany a Country of Russia Apologists?

Is it acceptable for a person to be sympathetic towards or have an understanding for Russia's actions in Crimea? Are Moscow's claims justifiable? Did the West provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin? For weeks, this debate has dominated the public discussion in Germany like no other. Generally, foreign policy remains a niche topic for experts. Russia has proven to be the exception.

The Crimean crisis has been the main issue in newspaper editorials and the topic of discussion on talk shows for weeks now. On websites, Crimea is leading in clicks and has emerged as the dominant issue in Internet forum discussions. Nothing, it seems, is as polarizing as the question of whether Moscow's annexation of Crimea was a justifiable reaction to NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe or if it was acting in violation of international law, thus making any sympathy for the move unacceptable.

Those expressing understanding for Russia's move are clearly dominating the Internet forums and talk shows. One former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, even declared that the situation in Ukraine is dangerous "because the West has gotten so terribly worked up about it." The question of whether Putin's actions were legitimate didn't even seem to interest him. "I find it entirely understandable," he said. Another former chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, admitted that he himself hadn't always respected international law.

Soft-Heartedness

The long line of general forgiveness extends from Philipp Missfelder, the foreign affairs spokesman for the parliamentary group of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, to German feminist intellectual leader Alice Schwarzer, from the left-wing to middle-class households and even deep into the conservative camp. Armin Laschet, who heads Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in the populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia, has even warned against anti-Putin populism. Be they people who simply romanticize Russia, those with a penchant for realpolitik, those nostalgic for the Soviet Union or just armchair leftists, there are so many people seemingly sympathetic to the annexation that many are scratching their heads and asking if Germany is a country of Russia apologists.

The soft-heartedness for Russia's iron hand has many origins -- some historic, some current, some idealistic and others material. The most obvious are the interests of business, because companies want to continue trading with Russia and therefore oppose sanctions. Other influencing factors include fears of a new cold or even hot war, historic ties to Russia and anti-American sentiment that is widespread in Germany. There's also no doubt a romantic idealization in Germany of the land of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And it's not as if Germans are familiar with any Ukrainian writers.

In an editorial titled, "Why I understand Putin despite everything," Schwarzer, who is Germany's best-known feminist writer, tries to empathize with Moscow's macho man. She describes Ukraine as a "bridge country that leans halfway toward the West and halfway toward the East," and argues, "that's how it should have remained." She accuses the Western media of reporting in lockstep (critically against Russia, of course) and defends Putin's "readiness to defend himself with an iron hand." After all, she writes, "it wasn't all that long ago that Nazi Germany invaded Russia" and murdered millions of children, women and men.